According to behavioural economics, people do not always make their choices in a rational way, as they are influenced by inner biases. Hence various contexts it may be useful to create some interventions that may help offsetting these biases: nudges. Nudging means modifying the choice architecture (by taking into account these biases) with the aim of helping people to make more informed and responsible choices, and without imposing anything nor changing the financial incentives behind the different options.
So, we re-designed Google Maps in a nudging intervention aimed at reducing carbon emissions, and it works by simply reordering the options of transport and colouring them in green, orange or red according to their emissions (that are made explicit).
In order to analyse the validity of the intervention, a survey was distributed to more than 140 people, and we observed that this simple re-design could lower CO2 emissions by more than 50% in urban movements.
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A cura di Giulio Nicoletti, Junior Researcher